


Heavy is the Head

by brokensongbird



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Gen, Hair Washing, Head Injury, Reminiscing, Season 3, Sibling Bonding, it kind of slots into canon if you take some liberties, post s3 ep 6, theres absolutely no plot to this either
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-02-23 04:10:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23638759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokensongbird/pseuds/brokensongbird
Summary: Tommy had been admitted to a hospital in London and like hell was Ada going to let him drive all the way back to Warwickshire, high on morphine with a fucking cracked skull when she had a perfectly good house around the corner. She'd just watched her brother collapse on her stairs from a brain hemorrhage, like fuck was she going to let him out of her sight now.Tommy, Ada, and a lot of introspection.
Relationships: Ada Shelby & Tommy Shelby
Comments: 23
Kudos: 91
Collections: Peaky Blinders Prompt Fest - Spring 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [PBPromptFestSpring2020](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/PBPromptFestSpring2020) collection. 



> for the PB Spring Prompt Fest! 
> 
> s3. Something involving Tommy recovering from his head injury.

Ada’s first reaction had never been fear – she had always been much more likely to spit back in anger, hiss in frustration than cower even when the situation had been completely hopeless. Back when her brothers went off to war, she had been seventeen years old and she had been told to wait for them to come back – there was nothing else to do. Instead, Ada scrounged up money and took night courses to get herself somewhere, she took to the streets with a pistol and shot rats to keep herself from going mad and she carved out a spot in her own life as an individual which she had never done by being scared and doing nothing.

But watching her big brother show up to her house drenched in bruises and sweat and shaking, shivering – collapsing like someone had cut all of his strings; the Fates or whatever puppet master he’d thrown his lot in with recently leaving his body limp and his eyes rolling back in his head – Ada had been petrified.

She sat on her staircase, cradling Tommy’s broken skull in her lap and the only thing that she could do in that moment was cry, and panic, and wait.

The Russians had carried his body – not dead, but lifeless – to the car and drove them to the hospital, Ada curled up like a child in her own backseat. She stammered out whatever medical terms Tommy had managed to whisper to her before, before, and a nurse sat her in a chair, and she waited. Looked at the white walls. Waited for news of Tommy, who had played so many roles in her life; big brother, stand-in father, warden; partner-in-crime, protector, benefactor. When, _if_ , he died –

Ada shook her head and dried her eyes, tilting her chin up. He wouldn’t die.

It may have been hopeless, and she may have given into her fear – but she was Ada Thorne, Ada Shelby and she would not let fear consume her.

Tommy was unconscious for two weeks.

During that time, the Shelby family had all but moved into her house – being the only one who lived in London, and at the start it was filled with some fragile tension, like everyone was holding their breath, counting between lightning strikes for the inevitable news.

The storm never passed but it never got any closer. Tommy was stable, but he was unconscious, and they soon had moments where they forgot. When Karl and Katie had teamed up to pull pranks on a sleeping John, Ada didn’t look over her shoulder to catch a glimpse of Tommy’s smile; when Arthur started singing a few hours into his whiskey, there was no one to roll their eyes and cuff the back of their brother’s head. It felt like they had grieved him already.

And then Tommy woke up.

He was in the hospital for another month, with a metal cage keeping what was left of his head together and morphine taking away from what was left of his mind. 

There had been no funeral to plan for anymore, Tommy had told them, so they could all piss off back to Birmingham and get back to the plan before anyone else ends up with a hole in their skull. So everyone left London, except Tommy and except Ada. When the doctors had finally allowed him to be discharged, he’d tried to go back to Arrow House – tried to attempt a four hour drive while high on morphine with pieces of his brain still seeping from his skull.

The frustration and anger welled up in Ada’s throat and she just about held back from dragging Tommy to her house by his ear, locking him in his own spare room for being such a stubborn bastard. She didn’t, of course, but she yelled up such a storm that even the doctor had gotten a migraine and Tommy was swaying on his feet too much to argue back, for once. Ada wasn’t above using his injury against him, if it got him to fucking listen to what was good for him – it was something she had learnt as a mother.

Victorious, she took Tommy home.

The house was silent. Tommy had sent the family away and he had never been much of a talker, even before his trust was broken again and again, but now he was near comatose – lips sometimes moving, plans in his head whirring but they never made a sound, like he didn’t trust himself to speak them around Ada. She tried not to get too offended at that, because his eyes would slide in and out of focus, talking to their dead mother and cursing the air. He was constantly high and scared, scribbling nonsense into notebooks.

And Ada, who had dragged Tommy home, wished that she had left him with the nurses. At least those people had been trained, at least they knew what they were doing and her fifteen minutes of emergency training at the town hall hadn’t prepared her for the emotions that would flood in, seeing Tommy broken and quiet and more vulnerable than he had ever been – _because that was her brother._

He’d always been her favourite sibling, not that she’d admit that to anyone. He was seven years older than her but unlike Arthur, he’d never been embarrassed to be followed by his little sister around town, and unlike John she didn’t constantly want to murder him. (Ada loved John, obviously, but they were only two years apart and they spent most of their childhood trying to drive each other insane.)

Tommy would sigh, take her hand so she wouldn’t be trampled under the crowds and let her tag along on whatever adventure Freddie had planned for the two of them. Slide half of his own portion of dinner onto her plate when their mother wasn’t looking. Sometimes he’d slide the other half onto their mother’s own plate, not that he’d admit he was worried about them. Looking at him in the bed now, swallowed by blankets, cheeks hollow and collarbones piercing his shirt, Ada wished he hadn’t needed to. But now he takes care of them in different ways, still underhand and still unspoken.

She ran a hand through his damp, dark hair, pushing it off his burning forehead and sighed. Stubborn bastard.

He’d been at her house now for two weeks and he had done better in increments. Less zoning out, more frustrated at his lack of independence. He wouldn’t allow her to hire a nurse and he flat out refused to let Ada help him with anything except dosage control which was non-negotiable since Ada would take the morphine bottle and Tommy was too weak to follow after her still, legs shaky like a foal.

It also meant that he couldn’t wash his hair, what with the instructions of keeping the wound dry. He’d had a few baths which he totally hadn’t tipped over, despite what the water all over the floor meant. _It was his house,_ he’d say _, and if he wanted to make a swimming pool in the bathroom he damn well could._

 _It’s my house,_ Ada would argue, _and you’re being a twat._

Tommy scoffed and ignored her, pretending to be able to read one of her books. Ada bit her tongue and let him pretend that he had fooled her, because the book he had picked up was a book on Marxism through a feminist perspective and if Tommy had known that he would have used it to light the fire in his room. She also pretended she didn’t see a few of Karl’s schoolbooks under his bed, with the letters shakily traced. If he didn’t want to talk to her about his problems, then she wasn’t going to either.

One thing that was a problem was the washing though.

Ada, one morning, walked into her guestroom and threw open the curtains, letting in the weak London sun. Despite the overcast sky and the measly quality of the light, Tommy groaned loudly into his pillow – he never slept well on his front, not even as kids, hating to leave his back undefended. Even before the war, he’d sleep with his back against the wall and curled into a ball, hands over his chest like he was trying to protect himself from something getting in.

But today she saw his legs stretched under the blankets and aimed a kick at them. “You’re starting to decompose in here.” Her bedside manner left something to be desired, but Tommy reacted better to the teasing than he did the pity.

“Good morning, Ada,” he grumbled.

“Look, Tom, you can’t keep going on like this.” She perched on the edge of the bed.

“I can’t fucking do anything, can I? M’stuck here until me fucking head heals up,” he didn’t lift his head off the pillow, but she could feel the glare regardless. His shoulders raised with a wince, so he probably also rolled his eyes too hard.

“You can at least wash your fucking hair and get out of bed.”

“No, I can’t,” Tommy scoffed.

“Alright, fine, you can learn that the world doesn’t go to shit if someone helps you, for once in your life.”

“What? And have you look after me like I’m your fucking kid?”

“Yeah, because right now you’re acting like one, having a bloody strop about bath time. So, don’t make me drag you into the bathroom and I’ll let you have a smoke.”

Finally, Tommy lifted himself from the mattress and turned to face Ada, elbows on his knees. He hadn’t shaved in a while either because of his shaky hands and for a moment Ada could see the resemblance to their dad, not that she would ever tell him that. Both herself and Tommy took after their mother more than any of their siblings and she always knew that Tommy was glad for it.

Right now though, with the short beard, his hunched shoulders and the scowl on his face, he looked more like their father than ever – except for the rare times Tommy would lose control of his temper, hands flying out and a dangerous glint in his eyes that was all Arthur Shelby Sr. 

“Fucking fine,” Tommy sighed, glare fading into indifference and he was back to looking like himself, or at least the image he had curated over the years. The unnoticed tension melted from Ada’s fists.

She nodded and Tommy threw back the covers with slightly too much effort than it should have taken and hobbled into the en suite.

“You coming or what?” he threw over his shoulder and Ada took a second to remember not to throttle him.


	2. Chapter 2

The room was filled with steam. The clicking of pipes drowning out all need for conversation as Ada leant over the side of the clawfoot tub. Tommy looked like a child sitting in his underwear, knees up to his chest, ankles crossed. A cigarette hung from the corner of his lip which rather ruined the image but the lines in his face had smoothed out and he looked like the Tommy she could vaguely remember from her childhood.

Of course, back then it was the other way around with Ada cramped in the small metal tub, splashing in the few inches of lukewarm water while Tommy sat on the floor, rubbing soap into her hair. A few years ago, maybe a decade or so, the fashion had been to have hair down past your waist and Ada could never look after it by herself, often having to get whatever family member was available to pin it up for her. Her mother had been the best at it, she thinks, and then Tommy. Arthur had been too careful, not wanting to accidentally stab her and so all of his pins fell out within half an hour and John purposefully tried to stab her with them, so he had been banned from helping.

“Do you remember doing this for me?” Ada asked, tilting Tommy’s head down and shielding the angry red scar with one hand as she poured water through his hair.

“You hated it,” Tommy laughed. Well, he half chuckled and his lips curled at the corners which was close enough. “You used to claw at my hands and scream every single time you had a bath.”

Ada raked her nails a little bit harder through his fringe for that comment, even if it was true. “Your callouses would catch on my hair, you dick, and it hurt. At least you’re not in pain.”

He rolled his eyes and pulled his head slightly out of reach. “Yes, because I’m not in any pain right now, Ada. My head isn’t broken or anything.”

“Your head has always been broken, drama queen,” Ada scoffed. “Now the outside matches the inside.”

“Now the inside is on the fucking outside, that’s the problem.”  
The little bit of levity in the room fell through the floor like a lead balloon along with Tommy’s tone.

In all honesty, the scar wasn’t even that bad – it was covered with mottled bruises but those would fade with time, and all that was left was a line around three inches long, angry red and sore to the touch but it was going to heal over. It was going to be fine. It just would take some time.

It wasn’t the injury that was the issue. It was the vulnerability that came with it, like someone had taken the invulnerable persona that Tommy had built for himself with bricks and mortar, knocked the wall down and there weren’t any king’s horses or king’s men to put Tommy back together again – Tommy probably wouldn’t let them help anyway. He was the only one he would trust to fix himself.

He was the only one he trusted with anything, nowadays. 

Some fucking priest out manoeuvred him. Ada didn’t know who or how, because Tommy was keeping his cards close to his chest – someone had something on him, playing the puppet master but he wouldn’t tell anyone that. That he was being used. Always had to protect the illusion of control, even from his family.

And now he was sitting, broken and bruised in Ada’s bathtub.

_Even with it all on the outside, I still don’t know what’s going on inside your head, Tom._

She reached forwards and pulled his head back towards her, continuing with the careful ministrations. He followed the motion without protest. The silent return to normality was the only apology either one was going to get for bringing the mood down.

The tension in the room fell away with the repetitive motions of lathered hands.

Once again, Ada picked up the bowl and tipped the water over Tommy’s head, one hand cupped over the scar. She watched the suds run down his neck in silence.

Or at least she tried to because for once, Tommy broke the silence like he’d taken a pistol to it.

“I used to do this for mum, as well.”

It was like someone had poured ice water down her spine with how fast she straightened up. 

“I didn’t know that,” Ada tried not to let on how much it affected her, how her knuckles tightened on the bowl so hard she thought she might crack the china.

Tommy either ignored the reaction or was still slightly out of it. He just nodded, thumbing the side of his nose. “Her hair was so long we’d need a second tub and it was so heavy that she couldn’t hold her head up by herself, but she’d be calmer then. She’d still go on about things that weren’t there but she would tell me stories that didn’t end in everyone fucking dying, she’d tell me how much she loved us. It was like whatever was chasing her couldn’t reach us in those moments, before things started to get really bad.”

“I … don’t remember much,” Ada admitted, a stone of guilt hanging heavy in her gut. She knew mum liked to sing but she couldn’t fucking remember her voice, apart from –

“Arthur and me, we tried to keep as much of it away from you and John as we could. The bad stuff,” Tommy said. He took another drag from his fag which Ada ripped out of his hands and took a deep breath from. In, hold, out. Her mind settled with the smoke flooding her lungs.

She could still remember one instance – one such ‘bad thing.’

Tommy frowned at the theft. “Especially after that one time. With the fireplace – ” That was the one.

“I know. I was there,” Ada cut him off brusquely.

She’d come home from school early one day – she must have been about ten years old and Arthur and Tom had been out at work, stealing and taking bets, and they had told her to go straight to the betting shop when she came home but she hadn’t, she hadn’t liked the betting shop ever since grandad had shot himself in his office two years before.

So, Ada had walked into their living room/kitchen and their mother had been relaxing on the sofa with a cup of tea in her hands, long hair draped over cushions and both eyes closed like she was asleep. She hadn’t been asleep though, because one moment Ada had been putting down her schoolbag and the next her mother was holding her shoulders in a bruising grip, shaking her with so much force that her head had cracked off the mantlepiece.

Ada didn’t remember much about what happened, what had caused it – just that mum had been yelling something about ghosts, and crowns and thrones and it had made no sense at all but it was so vitally important that she’d knocked out her only daughter to get the point across.

Luckily Uncle Charlie had been just on the other side of the door in the betting shop and had heard the ten-year-old scream. After that incident mum cried. It had been an accident, she’d seen _something_ and it was out of her control and they forgave her but they never did forget and afterward Ada had only seen their mum at bedtimes and mealtimes and never alone – always with her brothers hovering at the edges of the room.

They’d both inherited their thick dark hair from mum. And her blue, blue eyes. _Clear like scrying water,_ she used to laugh. People would only see what you wanted to see in them, whatever projection of the truth was most appealing, and you could hide behind those assumptions until the time was right. At one point, their mother’s eyes had shattered and whatever she could see was untouchable to everyone else.

Ada had a moment, after Freddie’s death, when she had seen him. Just once, standing over Karl’s crib.

She’d nodded at her husband and gone back to bed. Like her mother had warned her that day, she’d shaken hands with her ghosts and walked past them. If she interacted with them, if she gave in and listened then she’d be plagued with fear and anger and guilt, but Freddie had died of fever, not of war and there was no one to blame for it, no guilt on anyone’s conscience. Honestly, Ada had thought it was probably a dream.

However, a few nights, she’d heard Tommy talking to someone – too clear for it to have been in his sleep but slurred enough for the morphine to have taken effect.

Maybe they’d inherited more from mum than they’d bargained for.

There was a frizzle-like sound that brought her back out of Watery Lane and into the present. Ada was still holding Tommy’s cigarette, so he’d sparked up another one. They took a synchronised drag, and let the years slid off them like water. They had more to focus on than fifteen-year-old accidents.

Ada went back to getting rid of the last few suds of soap lingering in Tommy’s dark hair like snow.

“Can I get up now? Or does Queen Ada have any more demands?” he said, spreading his hands in a sarcastic half-bow.

“You can help me change the bed,” Ada dried her hands and then threw the towel at her brother who only fumbled slightly with it. “If you’re feeling up to giving me attitude.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i feel like these are really short but each chapter is the length of one of my tumblr fics so idk
> 
> also this was very much in the past, the next chapter will be focusing on the future


	3. Chapter 3

They were sat at the breakfast table, the small wooden one shoved into the galley kitchen because the sight of the long dark table in the dining room sent shivers down Ada’s back. Too empty, too quiet for just her and Karl, and those mornings when she had to wrestle him into his school uniform and find his shoes and his hat, while he ran away because she dared to brush his hair – those moments couldn’t happen while sat at a table that made her feel like an unwelcome guest in her own house.

Anyway – they were sat at the breakfast table; Ada with her feet up, cigarette leaving a coating of ash like snow over her plate; Karl with his arms crossed in a sulk, subtly trying to undo his tie every time Ada took her eyes off of him.

He toyed with the edge of his toast, frowning at the fact they only had marmalade and not lemon curd. She refused to tell him that when she was young, they barely were able to afford the bread, let alone have lemon curd on a semi-regular basis. It was no use getting annoyed at her son for having a better life than she did - it was what all parents should want, no matter how infuriating their attitudes became because of it. Her father used to tell them that they were lucky to have a house with a roof when she would complain that the roof leaked onto her bed. Karl took a small bite of his toast and washed it down heavily with his tea, his pristine shirt cuffs stained orange.

Something inside her wanted to snap that she had only had one shirt too, that it was patched but it was always clean and neat, because even if they had nothing, they had their appearances. People had enough reasons to look down on them already without giving them the ammunition of jam on their sleeves.

That lesson stuck more with some Shelby’s than others.

Speaking of Tommy, the floorboards creaked above their heads and Ada and Karl shot a look at each other, entirely too childish on Ada’s part and unnervingly mature on Karl’s.

Karl had grown up quite a lot in the past month that Tommy had been stuck in their guest room – hearing and seeing things that a six-year-old shouldn’t have to. A few days in he had been hovering at Ada’s shoulder while she peeled back the soaked bandages crowning his uncle’s head. A few days after that he became invested in trying to get his uncle to read to him, and as a child himself, he did not judge Tommy when he struggled on a few words. It just mattered that someone was there to do the voices.

Of course, he was still only six and six-year-olds shouldn’t have to be anything more than children, in her opinion.

The footsteps made their way down the stairs, the banister complaining under the pressure. 

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” Ada called out the kitchen door. The steps didn’t even slow down, heading down the corridor and towards the cloakroom. Shooting a look at her son, a warning to not repeat anything he was going to hear and to stay out of whatever confrontation was going to come. Karl rolled his eyes and kept nibbling on the bread.

By the time Ada had stepped into the corridor, she could see Tommy on the other side of the glass, coat in one hand and avoiding her gaze completely.

“I said, where the fuck are you going?”

He still didn’t look up, rooting through the coats to find where she’d hidden his holsters. How the fuck he knew where they were or how he found the gun sticking out from his belt was a mystery since Ada had buried them deep in her dresser drawers the day she’d brought him home.

“I’m going to Birmingham, Ada. Maybe you’ve heard of it,” Tommy answered, his voice was rough and deep like he had washed his mouth with gravel when he had woken up. His hands didn’t shake but he was squinting in the harsh morning light – eyes trailing to the side, watching the nothingness of her wallpaper with way too much intensity for him to be seeing anything real.

“And how are you planning to get there? By crashing your car on the other side of the country?”

“I’m fucking fine.”

Ada rolled her eyes at the blatant lie, the fag hanging between her loose fingertips was all that was stopping her from curling her hands into fists in frustration but then he nicked the lit cigarette from between her fingers and sucked harshly, his shoulders unfurling as he filled himself with smoke.

“Besides, I’ve got things I need to fucking take care of. Can’t do that sitting here for another two months.”

She scoffed, tucking her fists into her sides and not his healing face. “You’re high as a fucking kite, you can barely use your own fucking eyes, and you want to drive four hours to Warwickshire? Just because what? You’re bored?”

“I’m not going to Arrow House, Ada. Not yet. Got to go to the office, got to get things ready.”

“You know, I could understand if you wanted to go home, I’d drive you there myself since you’ve not seen your child in 2 fucking months, but - but your business means more to you? Leaving your kid with no mother and ditching him too, doesn’t that sound familiar to you? Trying so hard not to end up like mum and you’ve turned into dad instead.”

“I’m not like either of them,” he said, shrugging on his coat like nothing even fucking mattered to him anymore. Nothing she said was going to get through to him.

“Yes the fuck you are, Tommy. You’re mad like mum and you’re a shitty father too,” Ada hissed, too angry to really consider what the words really meant, but it got Tommy to stop in his tracks – buttons on his coat left half undone and hanging open while he finally looked at her. Ada kind of wished he hadn’t, though, because while the ice in his eyes had frozen her to the spot, he turned to face her, crowding into her space.

“Like you’re so much fucking better than me, eh Ada? Like any of us are decent fucking people?” He spat. His jaw was set so harshly it must have hurt; scowl set deep into his bones – he looked like dad. Ada took a step backwards. “Just because you ran away from this shit doesn’t mean you’re any less stained by it. Choosing to come back when your fucking high-horse decides it likes money more than morality, _just like me._ ”

Incensed, she grabbed his hat off the stand before he could even reach for the crowning jewel of his ‘fuck you’ façade, but she nicked her hand on the hidden blade. Ada cursed at the sting yet still kept it clutched to her chest, stumbling back a few paces until her back hit the glass of the cloakroom door. They stared at each other for a few seconds, neither really backing down. Blood seeped into the grey fabric – she had caught the razor not with her finger but with the entire length of her palm.

Tommy sighed and reached towards her, but Ada pushed herself backwards, yanking the hat even closer to her and cutting more of her hand in the process. It throbbed badly, her arm twitching with the pain but she gritted her teeth and glared at her brother. If he had just not been a stubborn twat, for once in his life, if he could just accept that he needed to trust her -

“Jesus fucking Christ, Ada come here,” he sighed. Slowly, he held her hand up between them, blood running sluggishly by her wrist and let the hat fall to the floor between them. “Your nursing degree teach you what to do with that or you need me to wrap it for you?”

She pulled her hand out of his roughly, tucking back against her stained shirt. “It wasn’t a degree, you dick. Just a course.”

Trust her brothers to keep making fun of her for that even five years after she had stormed out of that hall. Whatever, she had learnt enough on the job anyway.

“One you didn’t even finish either – so you want that help or not?”

“I’ve been changing your bandages for the last month by myself. I think I can handle one cut.”

Tommy scoffed and pushed her through the cloakroom door, shoving her down onto her own sofa while she protested, yelling at him to leave well enough alone. Tommy told Karl, who had crept out of the kitchen to watch the argument, to go grab the bandages from his room. Her son scampered out of the living room, footsteps thundering up the stairs, excited to be helpful to his Uncle. Bloody kid never listened when she asked him. 

“You can’t just take the offer, can you? Always need to be stubborn about having our help, our Ada.”

Suddenly there was a huge amount of pressure on her cut and she swore, trying to pull her handout of Tommy’s grip futilely. Her brother glared at her from where he was kneeling in front of the sofa, yanking her hand back towards him and pressing a rag into her hand to staunch the bleeding.

“Don’t say ‘our Ada.’ You sound so condescending,” she huffed, rolling her eyes to the ceiling and just letting Tommy wipe down the blood from her wrist with his patronizing attitude. As if he weren’t the one who had lain vulnerable in her bed for the last month, as if he weren’t the one who needed to be taken care of.

“Good to know my Polly impression is still spot on.”

His face didn’t so much as twitch, focusing on the bandages that Karl had just brought in. He was still drawn into a squint – likely a pounding headache or blurriness from the morphine, but his gaze did soften when he said it and it coaxed an incredulous smile out of her.

“Fuck off,” she laughed, swatting his shoulder with her good hand. Lightly, but just enough for him to sway in place in a way that he wouldn’t sober. “I’ll tell her you said that.”

“I’ll tell her myself. When I go back to Warwickshire.”

“Not today though, yeah? Let’s get you off those fucking drugs and you can drive yourself to the Poles if you want to, then.”

“Yeah, alright. Not today.”

He finished wrapping the bandages around her hand, tucking the loops together with a firm knot and then heaved himself up off the floor, falling down beside her on the sofa. Ada leant into the cushions, the light streaming in from the windows pooled on the back of her neck and warmed her from the inside out. She heard Tommy do the same, just for a second, sighing into the crook of his arm that he’d thrown over his face.

It was a rare quiet moment, something tangibly peaceful hung in the air but not sweet, more like a ceasefire. She was still mad about what he had said – about lumping her in with the rest of them, something she’d rebelled against since she had figured out what being a ‘Shelby’ had meant for her. But he was right, in a way. Irritatingly. No matter how much she insisted she was a Thorne, with no Freddie beside her the title was as empty as her attempts to distance herself from the scarred Shelby in her bones.

But she had been right too – that Tommy was getting closer and closer to ending up like their parents. She felt bad for her little nephew – Charlie was alone in that big house, with people that were paid to take care of him, people that were loyal out of fear. At least when she was alone she had had her brothers, at least there was always someone, no matter how insane they drove you, that would be there. She was alone in this big empty house, a hundred miles away from her family, but she had Karl and he was enough for her to stay sane. Maybe Tommy needed more than just his two-year-old, but he’d insist he didn’t need anyone.

But there was someone more powerful on the board now that he was unequipped to deal with alone, if only he could trust them enough to help deal with it, not just be pieces on his chessboard; he was going to drown under the weight of his own crown just to keep it on his head.

“You know we’re your family, right, Tom?” Ada broke the silence softly. “You know you can always talk to us.”

Tommy didn’t answer right away. She may have thought he’d fallen asleep if it wasn’t for the way his entire body tensed with the question.

“Talking family is what got my head fucking smashed in in the first place.”

Ada shot up, turning to face her brother who still was buried under his own arms. That was more information than she ever thought she was going to pull from him but it left her reeling – cold shock seeping down her back. Someone talked and it almost got him killed – now how was he really meant to trust them when his life was so easily manipulated? There was only really one person, one family member that he would have trusted with any information at all, but she couldn’t believe it.

“What does that mean? Tommy? Who talked?”

His mouth stayed closed with a stubborn frown and she wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him until everything, every secret spilled out. For his own good, or for her own curiosity.

But then Karl came sprinting into the room from wherever he had run off to.

“Mum! I’m late for school!”

Ada swore, again, rubbing a hand down her face and over her temples where a headache pressed against the seams. “Fuck, yeah, of course he is,” she muttered to herself. Half seven in the morning and there was already too much to process.

She turned to Tommy, who hadn’t moved at all. “You alright waiting here while I go drop him off? It’s only down the road, so I expect to continue our chat when I get back, okay, Tom?”

“Yeah,” he said, his head falling back further onto the patterned cushions. “I’m not going anywhere, Ada. Don’t worry about me.”

“Alright.” _Liar._ She settled her hand on his shoulder. “You know I love you, right?”

Tommy’s arms finally came down from his head, and he looked at her, giving her injured hand a quick squeeze. He didn’t smile. “Love you too.” He dropped her hand like it burnt him. “Go take your son to school before the other mum’s start gossiping.”

Ada tried not to feel dejected, gathering herself from the seams and painting a wry smile across her cheeks. “Don’t even joke about that, they’re a whole other species these posh London ladies. They’ll rip me apart faster than any razor would.”

“Bye, Ada,” he insisted, waving his hand without looking towards her.

“See you in a few minutes,” she called, endlessly determined. Ada left the sitting room and bundled Karl, with his shoes on the right feet and cap the right way round, into the car and through the school gates not even a ten-minute drive away.

But she drove back to an empty house and a bloody cap on her carpet.


	4. Chapter 4

Arrow House was ripe with debris and decay. It clung to the walls and the air and the floor, an inch thick layer of grief and shock like the house itself had sighed its last breath, and the regrets of a life gone to waste hung heavily around Ada’s shoulders. They shook under the weight of it all, cigarette burning holes in Tommy’s grand desk. There was a crystal ashtray a few inches from her hand but she couldn’t move; didn’t want to move. Why use an ashtray when the whole world had crumbled to ash in front of her?

They’d finally lost.

There was nothing left for her to fight now.

Ada would have sat in that rotting room forever; her red dress stained with embers, sitting between rows of empty chairs – markers for a lost family _._ One nameless maid had come with a bowl of lukewarm water and a rag, left on the desk for Ada to soothe her scraped knuckles, rubbed raw from beating the backs of the policemen. She asked for a whiskey – to soothe her throat and her mind – and if her nephew was okay.

 _He was,_ the maid had told her. _Slept right through the commotion and would likely sleep until morning._ When he wakes up, will he remember what he went through? That their whole family was being lined up as lambs for the slaughter? Well, lambs implied that they were innocent of their crimes, but their only crime was self-defence and self-betterment in the end. Pride and greed, in other words. Was that worth dying for?

Ada sipped the whiskey that had appeared at her elbow and nodded. The maid left to go check on the boy. Ada didn’t follow.

Her own son was at home, alone with a nanny back in London. It seems no Shelby could have both parents; Linda’s baby was going to be born with Arthur in a cell; Esme’s son would probably never know his dad, her other four kids had lost their mother young too; Charlie’s mother was dead and his father wasn’t much better off. Their own father left them at the drop of a hat, their mother could never really be counted as present. Were they cursed? Or were they just never meant to be parents in the first place?

Ada called out for more whiskey to an empty room.

[ Finn and Isaiah had gone with Johnny Dogs, down to the river where the rest of the kin were camped, where there would be fires and people and distractions. Where there would be whiskey by the barrel and nothing but open fields to break. Charlie and Curly had probably joined them, but Ada never bothered to check.

Lizzie had gone to secure the money, jumping to Tommy’s command again and cursing his name the whole time, slinking off through the backdoors. Esme, with her babe in arms, had disappeared – home, the Lees, back to her children, it was anyone’s guess. If it hadn’t been for the baby, she would have likely joined John in a cell for assault of an officer. Linda, pregnant and stubborn, had been taken away forcibly to calm down by an oh-so-kind policeman who had driven her home. A kindness, he had said while he dislocated her husband’s thumb. Ada just thanked God she hadn’t gone into labour, as if the evening needed any more drama. ]

The door to the office opened again and Ada turned to grab the bottle off whatever staff member had wandered in, but it was Tommy. Eyes closed, head resting on the rows on unread books: he didn’t move or say anything or even breathe in any way that acknowledged her presence.

“If you want some whiskey, you’ll have to wait a while. Apparently, your maids like to brew each batch before they bring it to you.”

Tommy’s eyes cracked open and she waved her empty glass, an empty gesture for him to join.

“You drinking me dry?”

“I think I’m justified in drowning myself right now, Tom.”

He nodded, pushing off the wall with calloused hands, roughened by shovel handles and boxing matches. He still had dirt lodged under his nails, a cut across the bridge of his nose – his expedition into the tunnels had only been a few hours ago, the panic of Charlie going missing, of a plan falling around their ears was only this morning, but Ada didn’t feel overwhelmed. Drained, maybe. Tired. A few lifetimes of stress in one day might do that to a person.

By the way that Tommy fell into the chair, he must have felt the same. He didn’t sit at his desk but in the seat next to hers and there was something about hierarchies, about family and status in his decision but Ada was too exhausted to think about it so she leant against his shoulder, his cheek supported on the crown of her head and they stared out the window together, neither one really looking at the sky.

But minutes ticked by and still the words kept turning over in her head. She worried at the phrasing, trying to get it smooth like a shiny penny but it just got chewed up and spat back out; a half mangled, sharp-edged mix of curiosity and grief. She asked anyway because the words needed to be said, nicely put or not.

“So, was this the grand plan all along?” She pushed her head off of Tommy’s shoulder, twisting in her seat to face him but still not really looking at him, or at anything in particular. Just a swig of whiskey, just to get the question off of her tongue. “Or just a side effect of all the shit you couldn’t tell me about?”

“Just a side effect. But I’m going to fix it.”

She scoffed into her glass. “Of course you are. Do me a favour and let me know if I’ll get killed along the way? I’ve got a will to write up yet.”

“You won’t die. Nobody is going to die.”

“How can you say that? How can you be so fucking sure?”

“I’m going to blackmail the King.”

His expression gave nothing away, not even a hint so that she could be let in on the joke because he could not be serious. He – no way. Ada’s mouth actually fell open, her hand falling to the side splashing whiskey over the side of her glass. His head injury must have been playing up, making him think it was April Fool’s and not June, or something because if he _was_ serious, then she was calling the fucking doctors again. 

But he was. He meant every word, Ada could tell from his eyes – tired but determined. Hare-brained plans kept together with hope and willpower were a Shelby staple, she had done the same with putting her newborn son between a fucking gang war – but this? This was too far for her to even contemplate.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Tommy are you high?” Ada sank back into her chair, rubbing her forehead because she had just rolled her eyes so hard it had given her a headache. It could have been the whiskey, but she couldn’t build a tolerance to her brother’s bullshit like the booze no matter how much longer she’d been dealing with it. “Listen, I know your head is fucked and you’ve had a hard day, but you realise what you’ve said is technically fucking treason, right?”

“I never thought you’d be the royalist of the family, Ada.”

“Fuck off. I just want to keep my last two brothers alive, if at all possible.”

“They’re not going to fucking die,” Tommy spat, like he had any right to be frustrated with her when he was being so monumentally stupid.

“Because you, Tommy Shelby, bookmaker and jumped up car salesman, are going to blackmail the ruler of the British Empire?”

“Yep.” He fucking shrugged. Downed another swig of whiskey but she nicked the bottle from his hand – they’d already had more than what could be considered reasonable between the two of them and if she were to get drunk, she was going to hit something or cry, and neither option were all too appealing.

“You’ve gone insane. You’ve finally lost it,” Ada muttered as she let the bottle slip from her hands and to the floor, out of reach for the time being. Of course, she had filled her glass beforehand, but she fucking needed it. Tommy’s plans had always been risky to say the least, had always glossed over collateral damage to get to the prize he’d set his eyes on, but this was too much. There was no doubt he was going to drag everyone else who had escaped with him, all drawn in by their fearless leader’s speech about family, about standing side-by-side - until they stood in neat little rows before king and executioner. There was no winning this.

As if challenged by her thoughts, Tommy raised an eyebrow, leaning towards her across the arms of their chairs. Despite the alcohol and the day’s trauma, his eyes were knife-sharp and clear. The singular focus of his gaze burnt like ice and trapped her all the same, even though she knew what he was going to say:

“You going to help me? Fight the fucking system, the government, and get our family back or you going to sit here in an empty room and feel sorry for yourself, eh?”

And fuck him, and fuck this plan, and fuck the implication that she had given up.

Of course she’d do anything, _anything,_ to save her family but they were all adults who had committed crimes – whether they fell into the life of crime or it was forced onto them, it didn’t matter when she had a six-year-old waiting for her to come home. She was all Karl had left. If she got taken away, he’d end up in the hands of another Father Hughes rather than left with family since their family was too wicked and immoral to be trusted with children. Too poor, too wild. Everything was always going to be stacked against them.

But Tommy wasn’t stupid. He knew the risks well, being all that Charlie had left now. God, he’d felt the repercussions of those risks earlier today when he’d passed Charlie off to a stranger, too distracted with business and the feeling of her heart in her throat when her nephew went missing had stopped Ada breathing for hours – the pain Tommy must have felt would be burnt into his head forever, a warning just like they'd intended it to be.

And yet he was still asking for her help.

This was all it took; two brothers, an aunt, and a cousin behind bars, a dead priest and a tunnel before Tommy could admit he needed help, before he could trust her with his plans from the beginning and fuck, what kind of sister, what kind of cousin or niece would she be if she didn’t at least try? Who was she if she sat back and accepted this without a fight? She was Adaand she was never one to sit still and do nothing when the odds were stacked against her.

She stood up, flicked the butt of her cigarette off Tommy's chest, and ignored the way he had won her over so easily. The wind whistled through the walls like a sigh of relief.

“I’m in.”

**Author's Note:**

> heavy is the head that wears the crown  
> but i'll still wear it


End file.
